AskMeNow

The name pretty much says it all: This is essentially an Ask Jeeves for cell phone users. You get a decent range of options for retrieving info on the go, but we found the service to be cumbersome.

Here's the basic idea: You call a toll-free number and leave your question on voice mail. The service responds with the answer via a text message to your phone. By the time you read this, AskMeNow will have launched a feature called AskAnything that lets you use an interactive voice-response system to pose simple queries by following the menu hierarchy (press 1 for sports, 2 for weather, for example). The feature wasn't available for us to try, however.

Our testing of the current system revealed some bugs. For example, we called, asked for a pizza place near our offices in Manhattan, and gave our ZIP code. The first reply said AskMeNow couldn't find an exact answer. The second gave a restaurant more than ten blocks from our buildingnumerous pizza joints are closer. Still, other types of info, such as the weather forecast, were accurate and helpful.

The company says it will launch a full mobile service akin to Handmark and Yahoo! Mobile soon, so we hope some of the issues we encountered will be fixed. If you want to settle an office bet or if you have an old phone that doesn't support WAP, this is your service. Otherwise, there are better offerings available.

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